Saturday, June 20, 2009

Today is my birthday, and one of my most memorable past gifts received was a fine art painting from a dear friend. I had admired it on one of our weekend shopping-and-latte trips, and I even returned to the gallery several more times to visit my new love. The painting was an impressionist still life of potted geraniums, colorful and elegant, with sweeping strokes and stabs of color that softened with distant viewing. It beckoned me to step closer, to be among the flowers, to enter the canvas. A treasured element of my home decor, it gives me joy each and every day.

The original oil paintings of Jean Levert Hood, a Design Style Guide artist from Texas, contain her own striking style of impressionistic magic - I am compelled to take a walk behind the gate, jump the fence, wander the waterline, or just breathe in the scent of a lovely bouquet.